Research vs. profit at Harvard
Would Harvard University help form a commercial company to profit from the research of Harvard scientists? For a while the answer seemed to be yes. President Derek Bok floated just such a proposal last month. The centerpiece of the plan was a gene-splicing technique, developed in the labs of Molecular Biologist Mark Ptashne, that can be used to make interferon. In the future, sale of interferon and other genetically engineered products could bring in millions of dollars, so the idea of creating a company to develop and eventually market such products seemed attractive to the managers...